1/3/2016

Chapter 10
Social Psychology
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Define: Behavior and mental processes in the context of our social

environment
10.1: Conformity: Changing ones behavior to more closely match the
actions of others

Aschs Conformity (10.1)

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Solomon Asch (1951)

7 Participants in a room
Visual Judgement
2 White cards 3 lines p. 366
6 people were confederates
Only 1 actual participants

Confederate - people following special directions from the experimenter.

What Did Asch Find?
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The number of confederates matter

Conformity increase with each confederate up to 4
After 4 did not increase conformity
1 confederate agreeing with the participant
Airline pilots: The Majority Rule (3 to create the majority)
Pilots of Eastern Cultures Due to culture co-pilots would not challenge

Why Do We Conform?
1) Normative Social Influence: we want to be liked by others.
2) Informational Social Influence: cues from others.

Group Think -

people within a group feel it is more important to maintain group

cohesiveness than to consider the facts realistically.

Results of Group Think

Titanic 1912
Challenger Disaster 1986
The Holocaust
Bethlehem Steel

Compliance (10.2)
Compliance - a change of behavior as a result of another person or group asking
or directing the change

Methods of Gaining Compliance

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Foot-in-the-door: small request followed by larger request

Door-in-the-face: large request followed by smaller request
Low Ball Technique: commitment made cost increases

Obedience (10.3)
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Changing behavior as a result of direct order from authority figure

Milgrams Obedience Study

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Stanly Milgram (1963, 1974)

Experimenter White Coat authority figure
Teacher & Learner
Electric shock punishment
Memory Test Teacher was actually the participant, was told the test
was on memory. Test was actually about obedience
Learner (confederate) protested starting at 150 volts
65% went all the way to 450 shock level

Results of Milgram
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Ethical issues
Long term effect of participants
The era in which the study was performed? (60s stronger respect for
authority figures)

Components of Attitude

Affective: How we feel towards something, how a person appears

emotionally
Behavioral: The action we take
Cognitive: What we think about something
Poor predictors of actual behaviors
GIBBLET: might do something
completely different given the situation. When you are angry at your boss,
he should be fired, he is incompetent, but youre still going to do your job.

Persuasion
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Persuasion: process by which one person tries to change the belief,

opinion, position, or course of action of another person through argument,
pleading, or explanation.
o Source
o Message
o Target Audience who its going to.
o Medium in which its being delivered
i.e. presidential
election, using twitter to target demographic

How We Process the Info:

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Elaboration Likelihood Model: either elaborate on the facts or pay

attention to the surface detail
o Central Router Processing: focus on the content of the
message being delivered
o Peripheral Routers Processing: Everything else except the
content of the message i.e. Advertisers will pay attention to
peripheral, as opposed to actual content

Cognitive Dissonance (10.5)

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Cognitive dissonance: Emotional discomfort resulting from

inconsistency between ones self-view and ones behavior. Example:
Cardiac surgeon, smokes two packs of cigarettes a day at work, but still
cause internal/visible stress
Resulting tension and physiological arousal cause us to reduce this tension
by:
o Changing behavior to match attitude
o Change cognition to justify behavior
o Form new cognitions to justify behavior

Social Categorization (10.6)

Social categorization: process of assigning people we meet to some

kind of category or group
o Mostly automatic and subconscious
o Can result in stereotypes

When We Meet Someone New

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Impression Formation: forming the first knowledge of someone

o
o
o
o

Social categorization
Assigning other to a number of categories
Drawing conclusions about what that person is likely to do
(making predictions of other behavior)
Primary Effect: first impression persists over time in spite of new
information.

Process of Social Categorization

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Implicit Personality Theory: sets of assumptions people have about

how different types of people, personality traits, and actions are all related
and form in childhood.
o Happy people are friendly people
o Quiet people are shy people
o Help to organize our schemas (mental patterns of what we believe
about certain types of people)

Attribution
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Parts of social cognition

Need to explain the behavior of others
Also explaining our own behavior
Can cause cognitive dissonance

Attribution Theory (Fritz Heider 1958): explanation of why things happen and
why people choose the explanations of behavior that they do.

Attribution Theory
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Situational Cause: the observed behavior is assumed to be caused by

the situation that the person was in at the time

If you are late for class, you are going to attribute that to: my car
didnt start, the road was closed, my alarm didnt go off, I forgot
my homework
If the other person is late, you are going to attribute that to:
person being a horrible teacher, its

Dispositional Cause: the observed behavior is assumed to be caused

by the persons internal personality characteristics (has an emotional
component i.e. the happy and unhappy marriage)

Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency for people observing someone

elses actions to overestimate the influence of that persons internal characteristics
on behavior and underestimate the influence of the situation - in explaining their
own behavior tend to use situational attributes instead of personal.

Actor observer bias because we are the actor not the observer.

Prejudice and Discrimination

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Prejudice: holding an unsupported and often negative stereotype

attitude about the member of a particular social group.

Discrimination: prejudicial attitudes cause members of a particular

social group to be treated differently than others in situations that call for
equal treatment.

Prejudice and Discrimination

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In-Group: all the people with whom one identifies with

Out-Group: everyone else
Scapegoats: the group of people with the least power

Realistic Conflict Theory

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Define: Increasing prejudice and discrimination are closely tied to an

increasing degree of conflict between the In-Group (has the power) and
Out-Group when those groups are seeking a common resource, such as
land or available jobs.

Social Identity Theory

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3 Process are responsible for formation of ones identity within a particular

social group
o Categorization: attributes towards other
o Social Identity: self-identification
o Social Comparison: viewing ourselves as better than other
groups

Stereotype Vulnerability
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Effect that ones knowledge of anothers stereotyped opinions can have

on that persons behavior.
o Produces anxiety re: behaving in ways that support the
stereotype.
o May result in a self-fulfilling prophecy

Reducing Prejudice (10.9)

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Equal status contact: all the same situation with neither group
holding power

Jigsaw Classroom: students have to work together to solve a problem.

Each student has a piece of the puzzle to solve the problem

Social Factors in Stress (10.10)

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Social factors on stress reactions and coping with stress

o Poverty
o Job stress
o Culture

Benefits of Social Support

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Social Support System: network of friends, family, neighbors,

coworkers, and others to help those in need
o i.e. Amish Community, they help each other. Member loses a
house, community builds a new one

Triangle Theory of Love (10.12)

Robert Sternberg
3 Main Components of Love
Types of loves as a result of combinations of components (different than
combinations)
o Passion
o Intimacy
o Commitment

Triangle Theory of Love (Combinations)

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Romantic Love: Intimacy and passion

Companionate Love: Intimacy and commitment
Consummate Love: Intimacy Passion Commitment gibblet: this
combination lasts the longest, hardest to achieve, most people dont

Aggression (10.13)
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Aggression: when one hurts or tries to destroy another deliberately,

either with words or with physical behavior

Form of social interaction
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: aggression as a reaction to
frustration.

Prosocial Behavior (10.14)

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Altruism: helping others with no expectation of reward and often

without fear of ones own safety.

Why Didnt You Help?

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Bystander effect: likelihood of a bystander (someone close enough to

help) to help someone in trouble decreases as the number of bystanders
increases.

Bystander effect steps:

o
o
o
o
o

Notice what is happening

Interpret as emergency
Assuming personal responsibility
Knowledge to help
Making decision to be involved

Chapter 11 Theories of Personality

Personality
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Our attitudes
Our reactions
Both physical and emotional
Define: unique ways in which each individual thinks, acts, and feels
throughout life.

Perspectives of Personality
1)
2)
3)
4)

Psychodynamic
Behaviorist
Humanistic
Trait

Psychodynamic
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Began with Sigmund Freud

Still exists today
Role of the unconscious mind in the development of personality

Psychodynamic
1) ID
2) Ego
3) Superego

Psychodynamic Freud
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ID (the child)
o
o
o
o
o
o

Most primitive part of personality

Present in the infant
Completely unconscious
Pleasure seeking
All the biological needs: hunger, thirst, sex drives
Pleasure principle: desire for immediate gratification

Ego: (the parent)

o
o
o
o
o
o

Executive director
Results in the need to deal with reality
Mostly conscious
Rational logical cunning
Reality principle: satisfying the needs of the ID only in way that
will not lead to negative consequences
Sometimes denies the ID what it wants

Superego: (morality)
o
o
o
o

Moral center of personality

Over the self
Developed as pre-school aged child learns what is right and wrong
Contains the conscience

Psychodynamic Freud
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Defense mechanisms: dealing with reality through distorting ones

own perception of reality (page 413) http://psychcentral.com/lib/15common-defense-mechanisms/ (does not include undoing)
o Denial refusal to accept reality or fact
o Repression - unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts,
feelings and impulses
o Rationalization - putting something into a different light or
offering a different explanation for ones perceptions or behaviors
in the face of a changing reality.
o Regression reversion to an earlier stage of development in
the face of unacceptable thoughts and impulses.
o Acting Out is performing an extreme behavior in order to
express though or feelings the person feels incapable of otherwise
expressing.
o Dissociation person loses track of time and/or person and
instead finds another representation of their self in order to
continue in the moment.
o Compartmentalization lesser form of dissociation, wherein
parts of oneself are separated from awareness of other parts and
behaving as if one had separate sets of values.
o Projection misattribution of a persons undesired thoughts,
feelings or impulses onto another person who does not have those
thoughts, feelings, or impulses.
o Reaction Formation - converting of unwanted or dangerous
thoughts, feelings or impulses into their opposites.

Displacement - redirecting of thoughts feelings and impulses

directed at one person or object, but taken out upon another
person or object
Intellectualization - overemphasis on thinking when
confronted with an unacceptable impulse, situation or behavior
without employing any emotions whatsoever to help mediate and
place the thoughts into an emotional, human context.

Next time you go out to eat: Pick a couple or family. At least 2 or more
people. That you can see or observe, but you cant hear them. Think
about what is happening between transpiring in that situation. Are they
friends, are they enemies, are they related. Does one do love the other?
Our projection experiment.

Psychodynamic Neo-Freudians
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Carl Jung
Adler
Erikson

Neo-Freudians
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Carl Jung
o
o

Alfred Adler
o
o

Collective unconscious: species memory containing

archetypes universal human memories (anima/animus)
Father of group therapy

As children: develop feelings of inferiority when comparing

themselves to adults
Driven not to seek pleasure but to seek superiority

Erik Erikson
o
o

Focused on social relationships

Psychological stages

Behaviorist Perspective
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Based on Learning Theories of Personality

Bandura
Rotter
Social Cognitive Learning Theorists

Reciprocal Determination Self- Efficacy

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Albert Bandura

3 factors in determining the patterns of behavior that make up

personality:
o Environment
o Behavior
o Personal cognitive factors

Self-efficacy: ones expectancy of how effective ones efforts to accomplish a

goal will be in any particular circumstance.

Social Learning Theory (11.4)

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Julian Rotter
o
o
o
o
o

Based on Thorndikes Law of Effect

People are motivated to seek reinforcement and avoid punishment
Personality: stable set of potential responses to various situations
Patterns of responding to situations
Locus of control: internal or external i.e. Influences how you
react to a situation and your impression of that situation. Internal
locus of control: tend to take responsibility of yourself, focus
internally on your strengths/overcome
1) Internal - overcoming a challenge, focused on
getting over challengers. Internal is stronger
2) External whats around that could help me,
what should help, what didnt happen, or what
should have happened.

Humanistic Perspective (11.6)

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Carl Rodgers and Maslow

Subjective emotions
Freedom to choose our own destiny
Elements that make us uniquely human
Humans are always striving to fulfill their innate capabilities to achieve
their full potential
Self-Actualizing Tendency
o giblet: Rodgers saw it on a human level, everyone is capable to
reach their full potential and they possess all the resources to do
so, we all have our own answers.
o giblet: Maslow believed it on a spiritual level.

Self-Concept

What we are told by others

How our actions are reflected in the words and action of important people*
(parents, teachers, people we look up to) in our lives
Self-Concept is broken into two categories:
o Real self how we really are, the action that make us up
o Ideal self how we ideally see ourselves

Positive Regard
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Rodgers

Unconditional Positive Regard: extremely powerful in helping others

achieve their full potential
Fully Functioning Person: one who is in the process of selfactualization, actively exploring potentials and abilities; experiencing a
match between real and ideal self.

The Fully Functioning Person

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In touch with their own feelings and abilities

Trust themselves
Able to effectively reflect on their own thoughts and feelings
Able to effectively communicate their own thoughts and feelings
Able to view themselves as a functioning and emotionally stable
separate from any type of relationship

Relationships
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Meant to enhance the individual not define them

Fully Functioning: achieved in conjunction with the relationship
Unconditional Positive Regard from your partner promotes the growth of
each individual within the relationship
The self and relationship co-exist

Trait Theories (11.8)

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Describing personality and predicting behavior

Trait: consistent, enduring way of thinking - feeling or behaving
Describing personality based on traits

Trait Theory
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Allport: Gordon Allport:

List of 200 traits

Wired into nervous system
Evidence of heritability of personality traits

16PF
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Raymond Cattell

Surface Traits: easily seen by others

Source Traits: traits under the surface traits
Example: Quietness or shyness introversion
Factor Analysis: commonalities in numerical data
Sixteen Personality Factor 16PF trait and factor tests

Cognition and Stress (11.12)

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Richard Lazarus
Cognitive Mediational Theory of Emotions
How we think about or appraise the stressor major factor in how
stressful the event actually is for us
Primary appraisal: estimating the severity of the stressor
giblet: high
the first time but starts to dwindle after repetition
Secondary appraisal: estimation of the resources available to us

Personality Types
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Type A tightly wound, high pressure, everything has the same severity
level.

Type B easy going, nothing seems to frazzle or stress.

Type H: Hardy: very well prepared person that tends to take on

challenges. They dont see things as stressors.

Chapter 12 Psychological Disorders

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Psychopathology: study of abnormal behavior and psychological

dysfunction
History: bloodletting drilling of holes in skulls spirit possession
Now: Medical Model Approach: Diagnosis and Treatment (most effective
approach): psychological disorders

What is Abnormal?
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Social norm deviance - Giblet: Just because its abnormal behavior

doesnt mean its an illness. Is it diagnosable and should it be treated? i.e.
Cast Away vs Guy in Office talking to Wilson
Subjective discomfort clients own subjective perception over their
own level of discomfort
Inability to function - determined by the level of function not by the
diagnosis/label you have
Maladaptive not able to adapt to your discomfort
Danger to self or others

Biological Model
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Biological or medical cause

Disruption in neurotransmission
Chemical imbalances
Physical trauma to the brain i.e. pcs and tbi
Organic causes

View Points
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Psychodynamic
Behaviorism
Sociocultural
Biopsychological

Diagnosis and Classifying

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DSM 5: International Classification of Diseases (ICD)

Accuracy of DSM Diagnosis
Pros and cons of a diagnosis pro: the patient may get an answer that
they didnt have before con: if a patient receives a diagnosis, now they
use it as a crutch
Purpose of the DM- has evolved over time

Pros: Keeps doctors and therapists honest, gives a structured protocol and
a guideline

DX (Diagnosis)
1) Onset - starting point of behavior
2) Frequency how often are we seeing the behavior that we are seeing

3) Antecedents - what came before this behavior, trying to find the baseline of
personality and behavior all the responsibilities you do now, the current
state of how you act
4) Intensity - how severe are the symptoms we are seeing
5) Duration - how long its been occurring, you have to meet a certain
duration of symptoms*
Rule Out Component: not contributed to an organic cause, illness, drugs,
or anything else
*you have to see those symptoms over a period of time, they might not meet
criteria
Giblet: If its in the DSM4 but still in the DSM5, is it still there? yes

Best Predictor of Future: Past

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Historical Info: Recent History (within the last 3 to 6 months)

Collateral info* info from family, friends
giblet: always more
reliable from others than the patient, especially in mental health
Signs and symptoms - signs- what you can see from behavior,
symptoms what the patient reports
Crisis info should always be suspect and considered unreliable if a
patient if giving you symptoms in a crisis, its probably not accurate or
irrational

*the patient themselves does not see their behavior as an issue in mental
health

Mental Health - understanding the impact of my behavior on others and myself

and modulating my responses
-

When responses become maladaptive, thats when mental illness

becomes visible
Look at the functional level to see if they are functioning in their
everyday life situational stressor symptoms can be temporary, are
brought about by a certain situation but not permanent

Family History (FX HX)

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What are symptoms pointing to?

Psychopathology: cluster of behavior that lead to the dysfunction

Anxiety Disorders (12.4)

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Dominant Symptom: excessive anxiety

Phobias
Social Anxiety Disorders
Panic Disorders
OCD
PTSD

Dissociative Disorders
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Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Mood Disorders
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Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

Bipolar Disorder: is very closely connected to ADD
o Type 1: Manic + Depressive
o Type 2: Depressive
caused by lack of lithium produced in the body

Example of maniac state: 2 am in the morning youre going to reconstruct your

basement, not seeing anything wrong with this, Sexual preoccupation and
promiscuous behavior, delusional thinking, grandiosity
Example of depression state: isolates themselves, cant get out of bed

Medication compliance stabilize the patient on medication, they feel better, then
they still stop taking the medication

Eating Disorders
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Anorexia Nervosa
Bulimia Nervosa

Schizophrenia
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Symptoms
On-set male, early 20s
Causes
Giblet: Prevalence is very low, bipolar and major depressive is top 2

Personality Disorders
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Antisocial
Borderline very black or white, all or nothing i.e. I love you or I hate
you
o lots of broken relationships

Review Notes
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Only throw things in the book that I required, that I talked about. May test
you on a section I did go over, if I gave you the numbers from section. I
want you to know the section.
Classical Conditioning: will be one of the essays, wont be in the multiple
choice or true/false